Posted
by
Soulskill
on Saturday September 15, 2012 @07:02PM
from the riding-a-new-horse dept.

dgharmon points out comments from AMD's Steve Belt, who was asked about the company's upcoming Hondo APU. Hondo is their biggest attempt to date to break into the tablet market, and they're doing so with a distinct focus on Windows 8. Belt said, "This is a Windows 8 product, only. We're not doing Android on this platform, at least not now. ... It is a conscious decision not to go after Android. We think the Windows 8 space has a lot of opportunity, there's plenty of TAM [total addressable market] there for us to go at. So we don't need to spread ourselves into other markets, we think Windows 8 is a great place to start. Down the road we may look at Android, right now we're focused on Windows 8." The article adds, "With both AMD and Intel readying Hondo and Clover Trail respectively for Windows 8 and pushing their respective customers to come up with designs at roughly the same time, it will be interesting to see just how many Windows RT tablets will appear at the operating system's launch. However one thing is clear, neither AMD nor Intel will have Android x86 tablets running with their respective next generation ultra low voltage chips." Fortunately, there's nothing stopping users and manufacturers from running other OSes on Hondo.

I think Windows 8 is shaping up to be like Vista: An attempt to coerce consumers into buying into a walled garden. PC hardware and software manufacturers have been looking jealously at Apple's profit margin and smacking their lips, wondering how to lock in their own slice of the pie. Vista had a bunch of DRM and other features that were friendly to manufacturers but bad for consumers. I am not convinced Microsoft is even trying to make Windows 8 successful -- I think they know it's going to fail, but they're using it to set the stage for its successor, which will do away with many, but not all, of the bad features of Windows 8.

It's a marketing ploy commonly used elsewhere, but not on such a broad scale. It's like this:
Would you buy this memory card for $100?
Hell no!
Well, how about $30?
Oh, well, that sounds more reasonable.
...It only cost $5 to produce and distribute. It's a negotiating tactic -- you shock them first, then back off to appear more reasonable, but still wind up bilking them for more than they'd pay straight across. It's psychology. I think Windows 8 and it's peripheral products -- like this one, are about psychology. It's conditioning the consumer to accept vendor lock-in. Windows 8 is being thrown under a bus so Windows 9 can be shoved down your throat.

Vista had a bunch of DRM and other features that were friendly to manufacturers but bad for consumers.

In order to judge the relevance of this statement to the rest of your point, I need your answer to the following question: Which of these manufacturer-friendly features of Windows Vista were eliminated from Windows 7?

Vista had a bunch of DRM and other features that were friendly to manufacturers but bad for consumers.

In order to judge the relevance of this statement to the rest of your point, I need your answer to the following question: Which of these manufacturer-friendly features of Windows Vista were eliminated from Windows 7?

And of course the answer is none, actually they introduced more. But their were plenty of irrational articles claiming it was the anti-Christ, and plenty of the non techy crowd like the person your responding to believed all the FUD, Vista sucked, but that had more to do with poor driver support early on and the damned UAC prompted, Win 7 removed those 2 problems and suddenly everything is wonderful.

Your assertion implies that if I were to run Vista today with well-supported drivers and UAC disabled then it would suck no more than Windows 7. Sorry, but that isn't true by a long shot. Have you touched Vista in the last two or three years? I assure you, it still sucks--decidedly more than Windows 7.

Similarly, I have yet to hear a logical reason why Vista is better. Because in my opinion, Vista sucks--and Win7 managed to "fix" some of Vista's biggest pains in the ass, while bringing what are (again, in my opinion) some very welcome changes in the form of the new taskbar and Aero Peek/Shake/Snaps. And yes--dare I say it--even the ribbon in Microsoft Paint and WordPad. I'm not a fan and never really was a user of either Paint or WordPad, but I have to admit, I do like the ribbon interface and it can r

"A few years ago" and "years before that happened" implies 5+ years. I'm going to be lenient and go with 4+ years.

You're implying that 8GB was pretty standard more than 4 years ago? Vista was still fairly new, SP1 was only just being introduced, so 64bit was not overly common in midrange systems. Even if you try to assert the bold claim that anything less than 8GB "years before 4GB DDR3 sticks became dirt cheap" was budget, 6GB is still plenty of RAM, there's not a lot of stuff that requires 8GB that'll

>And of course the answer is none, actually they introduced more. But their were plenty of irrational articles claiming it was the anti-Christ, and plenty of the non techy crowd like the person your responding to believed all the FUD

I guess Slashdot is part of the non techy crowd then. There were thousands of +5 INSIGHTFUL comments about the DRM in Vista, so no wonder the OP believes the 'get the facts' FUD campaign by Slashdot against MS. Hell, Slashdot even tried the same tactic against Windows 7.

First, thanks. I wasn't going to respond to the OP because he arrogantly went about labelling me a "non techy" for sporting an opinion different than his own. Second, my original post in this thread has been floating in the +0 category for most of the time it was front page... I'm not sure "party line moderation" is as prevalent as you suspect.

Oh please! Can we finally stop listing this BS as truth? Thank the FSM that Ballmer was too damned busy squirting with his Zune to care about Win 7 which thanks to the Office guys is NOTHING like Vista. From the kernel on up it was improved, got rid of the "senior moments" that Vista was notorious for, hell go look at the Wiki article where it has a "features new to Win 7" list that is more extensive than I care to type.

Comparing Vista to 7 is like saying XP was just WinME with a better kernel, its horseshi

Microsoft went open (Shh, let me make my point), Apple went walled-garden, app-stores and didn't take kindly to the replacement of their apps, hardware components etc with others - basically decided they knew best and this would ultimately benefit their users.
So, two different approaches to the market - and Apple have come romping home the winner.
MS switches to the Apple approach - but I'm just not quite sure it's going to work. IF I personally wanted this experience, I'd be typing this on an Ipad already. If MS think they can out-apple, apple - then good luck to them, but I just don't see it happening (whilst I can see myself getting quite pissed off and giving Linux another punt).

.. why was this modded down? This is exactly right. The whole industry is pushing right now to get the consumer used to locked in walled garden products. From consoles for games, to closed/half-closed operating systems for cellphones and tablets, to desktop operating systems that dumb down commodity pcs and tie them to services in the same way.

Asked and answered, your honor. My posts have seen a lot of 'retroactive modding' from angry group-think moderators lately because I've been posting my own analysis of current events, not the populist view. Remember that the moderation system on slashdot essentially comes down to "+1 agree" and "-1 disagree". The words are just there as flavor text.

Well please keep it up, I know I'd much rather have differing viewpoints instead of mindless groupthink and insults.

As for TFA its total FUD, AMD has already released the specs for Brazos and Hondo is just Brazos 2, they aren't supporting Android because no OEM has asked to use this chip in an Android device so wasting time making drivers that nobody is asking for is just stupid. You'll be able to use any bog standard Linux on this, be it Ubuntu or Debian or whatever, since AMD opened their specs on Brazos

You are a fool to ignore the trend here, in windows, in microsoft's other product lines, and in the market at large. Things ARE being moved into position, bit by bit to lock the open general purpose desktop down, or at least make it mostly irrelevant.

But whose fault is that? Its YOUR fault if you went and bought Apple, that's who. Look at the lines like tickets to a rock concert for any iDevice and you'll see why other corps are looking at walled gardens, because Apple showed that most would rather have status symbols and fashion than an open device.

At least with Windows, even Win 8, I can rip out Metro for ClassicShell or Start8 or if I spend a whole $30 I can even have a KDE or GNOME desktop thanks to AstonShell, I can install any damned thing I want,

If you expect others provide 'evidence' you should've started with some of your own. What history are we talking about exactly? Recent? Like the full screen start menu spammed with tablet style apps? The dumbing down of the desktop even from vista/7 standards? Hotmail being the default authentication for user login? It's obvious they're pushing users to get used to the services-based tablet/phone model. The evidence is right in front of you. Beyond the scope of microsoft, there's even more evidence for

Lets look at history then, since you suggested it. For Microsoft's entire existence one of their most important goals has always been backwards compatibility, even to the overall detriment of their OS. There is no reason to think that they would suddenly pull a 180 and lock out people from using/installing the software they are used to. Remember, they make a large chunk of their money from corporate installs where something like this would not be tolerated. They are not stupid, it is not going to happen

I think this is a little naive. No company would intentionally engineer a failure of a product. That's not what Microsoft has ever done. Rather Microsoft has been releasing service packs as new operating systems.

It may look like every second version is a flop, but that's not what's going on here.Windows 2000 lacked compatibility with DOS and Windows 3.x and Windows 9x gamesWindows Vista lacked compatibility with software unaware of UAC, changed the driver models, first OS that multicore works out of the box, first 64bit version available at retail, etc

A lot of complaints about Vista are the same complaints leveled at 2000, 95 and 3.0, that some compatibility was broken. But Microsoft has completely done away with this game with Windows 8 and went "You write it for the managed C runtimes using Metro interface or you don't play at all", The last time this happened was with Windows 95. Yes applications for Windows 3.1 could be installed on Windows 95, but the Windows 3.1 program and file managers were still available if you migrated. Those applications will NOT install onto a 64bit windows no matter what.

A Windows 8 slate/tablet/whateverthehellitwillbe... is not going to succeed because it doesn't run iOS apps. It's also not going to run x86 Windows 7 apps either. Apple leveraged their existing iPhone developer base to bring out the iPad, but when the iPhone originally was released, people were predicting it would fail. You want to know why that is? It's because the entire interface was different. Microsoft is in effect copying this change in interface (not the interface itself) and if it succeeds, you can kiss away the Windows and Mac PC land as all consumer devices will be come walled gardens, and the only people who still have a full sized PC will be the same people who 30 years ago had a minicomputer or a type writer. Us old-people.

But all is not lost. Content production will still require a Mac or PC, as storage has not yet caught up. We're maxing out at 64GB for a tablet device, because it's simply not possible to put any more NAND flash in a device, if it's made any smaller, it wears out faster. Memistors and other next generation solid-state memory is close to production so this might just be a temporary plateau in storage sizes while the next stuff is mass produced.

Camera devices haven't been completely eliminated by camera phones, because the DSLR people won't let go of their super-sized lenses. But all the point-and-shoots, no more need for those. You only need a separate camera now if you're a Pro video/photographer.

What about android? Will since Oracle had it's ass kicked, that leads to some promise, but I think Android's days are numbered unless some kind of "One Android" standard is created. Remember back in the days of "IBM PC compatible" ? This is what we're facing. A pile of devices that are not compatible because they don't run the same CPU let alone any other piece of hardware. It would make sense, for Google to dump the current naming system in favor of something more straight forward, eg Android 4, Android 5. And the Android markets need to get a hardware profile from the device before sending it a version that works on that device configuration or tell the user that they must update to the latest version (and where to get it) before downloading. Anyone who was using a PC back in 1986 can tell you how much of a pain in the ass it was to configure DOS until Windows 98 came along and all games started being made for DirectX. The only stuff that worked out of the box were self-booting games from around the Dos 3 era.

[elaborate but idiosyncratic list of Windows versions that were "successful" and those that weren't]

Are you on crack?... I ran NT 3.51 with full SMP on a dual PII-266 box back when that was a hot rig

Agreed; NT 3.5 and 3.51 were wonderful. Actually I used NT 3.1 big time from the day it came out and thought it was great. The story was, NT 3.1 was too slow. I was using it on 486-25 and 486-33 uniprocessor and didn't think so, and I bet if you [could] install it on today's hardware the speed would be stunnin

Dude...its FUD, not only is it FUD, its FUD by Intel, who went with the PowerVR chip on their new Atom and thus has ZERO Linux support possible!

All AMD said is they haven't got ANDROID support out of the gate...WTF does ANDROID have to do with Linux support? AMD opened their specs ages ago, the new chip is based on Brazos which has been supported for quite awhile now.

So don't buy the FUD, they simply said they don't have Android drivers because nobody has asked to put out an Android version of this particular chip...DUH! Android sells biggest on ARM NOT X86, so WTF? Why would you care? Its not like Ubuntu or any other X86 Linux won't run just fine on this.

So for those that want the truth here it is: Intel went with PowerVR, PowerVR made it VERY clear they don't give a rat's ass about opening shit or supporting Linux anything, several articles pointed out Intel marketing drones saying as much and when it starts to cause a stink Intel tries to spin by going "But but but..they hate Linux too see?" except they don't NEED to "support Linux" as the specs are already open and the drivers already out there.

As for as Win 8? Its a bomb, you know this I know this, hell I bet half of MSFT knows this but Steve "God damned it I want to be Apple!" Ballmer and snickerdouche Sinofsky is gonna ram this turkey home whether anybody wants the damned thing or not. Final verdict? win 8 will "sell" on tablets because Ballmer will shit another billion by selling ipad specs at kindle prices, on the desktop it'll make Vista look like XP, most will say "Meh" and not care, the world keeps spinning.

So when you're unhappy with something being repeatedly dumbed down for the masses, just cop to 'smile while you eat your shit' corporate doublespeak to make yourself feel better?

Lots of something being shovelware'd out on machines is not necessarily success from a consumer perspective, especially when a monopoly is involved. I don't get how you expect the consumer your message replies to, to accept this dumbing down a success when she is not getting what she wants. As a consumer, why do you expect her to g

How in the hell was 7 "dumbed down" dude? jumplists, breadcrumbs, sensible (thank fucking God!) memory management, an explorer than finally defaults to two pane, where in the hell is this "dumbing down" on which you speak?

Dumbing down is XP with Fisher price blue and than damned search puppy, Win 7 was the first MS OS since Win2K pro where I could point and say "THAT is an improvement!" especially for business desktops and workstations which are anything BUT dumbed down.

Vista didn't "succeed in the market". It was the next iteration of a monopoly that dates back to DOS. They only thing it needed to do in order to "succeed" was just show up. Except it didn't quite work that way. No. Vista managed to fail despite of it's market advantages. People and companies avoided it in droves. Hardware vendors offered downgrades to XP.

A monpoly product is a failure when people actively avoid it for the previous version.

They couldn't even force feed Vista to people.

Vista was responsible for XP continuing to linger on until the next version of Windows was released.

What's with all these new CPUs being labeled for "Windows 8 only?" First it was the new Intel processor, now AMD. Does Microsoft have some new ridiculous "partnership" strategy going on that we need to be aware of?

First: Reduced performance for significantly lower power consumption. There's no top range Ivy brige CPU right now (extreme edition) because the Sandy bridge are fast enough for that problem.

The second issue is going to be less CPU and more motherboard, UEFI specifically. While supported on 64 bit vista and Windows server 2008 and later you need a legacy mode for windows XP, it's 64 bit only and a few other inconveniences for windows 7 and up.

Linux can run without an IA32 layer on x86_64 and both amd and intel have long histories of supporting linux with drivers for their gpus and power management. Having a 'gpu accelerated operating system' doesn't require an on-die gpu..at least in the sense of having a gpu accelerated GUI. Even if alternate concepts of the former would be beneficial, there is nothing intrinsic about windows 8 that requires GPU-like, crazy-scale SIMD instructions within the cpu.

It does do 'gpu accelerated' desktop though, and that requires a GPU that supports the functions you're calling.

Again, it's not like these things can't exist now, it's just hard to convey that.

The on chip CPU thing is a combination of power and definitely getting a GPU part that isn't soul crushingly horrible, and will actually support the DX11 directcompute stuff that windows 8 uses to speed things up.

there is nothing intrinsic about windows 8 that requires GPU-like, crazy-scale SIMD instructions within the cpu.

Depends what you mean by intrinsic. Windows 8 can use GPU acceleration on just about everything (which is

So far, non graphics stuff on gpus only has a few niche areas (embarassingly parallel math like crypto or physics mainly). These tasks are only worth doing on mid to high end gpus, so doing them on these combo chips targeted at tablets and the like will not produce interesting results. Afaik, There is nothing in windows 8 that makes integrated gpu elements necessary on desktop or tablet hardware, so what's the big deal? Directcompute is already available on x86 and has been for quite some time.

uh... GPU accelerated video transcoding is the big mainstream app, along with physX on games. If the desktop actually runs through the 3D subsystem it can take advantage of the 3D hardware. I'm not convinced that will be faster than 2D for simple things, but when you start layering on effects like transparency, layering, morphing etc. it makes a big difference.

These tasks are only worth doing on mid to high end gpus, so doing them on these combo chips targeted at tablets and the like will not produce interesting results.

None of this statement is true. GPU accelerating the transparency effects around windows don't require a lot of power, and the benefit is noticeab

None of this statement is true. GPU accelerating the transparency effects around windows don't require a lot of power, and the benefit is noticeable, not all that important, but it does exist.

More importantly. Even if it isn't visibly noticeable. It can be noticed on the battery life. Windows 8 is GPU accelerated to improve battery life, probably not because it needs it to be able provide 60fps for very basic graphical effects.

It Intel FUD because they went PowerVR friend. As we all know PowerVR chips are notorious for not working worth a shit on Linux and the company that makes the chips and licenses the IP have already made it clear they don't care.

If you read TFA you'll see ALL that is says is the Hondo chips "Won't have Android drivers OOTB"...so what? Android is used on ARM, not X86. If you want to run ANY bog standard X86-64 Linux on this its not gonna be a problem, if it supports Brazos it'll support Hondo as Hondo is just

That would be my guess as well. Usually, companies say something along the lines of "we have no immediate plans for Linux support" if they're going to focus on a different OS. To rule out future support in advance in such firm words suggests there is some sort of exclusivity bonus.

What's with all these new CPUs being labeled for "Windows 8 only?" First it was the new Intel processor, now AMD. Does Microsoft have some new ridiculous "partnership" strategy going on that we need to be aware of?

The simplest explanation -- that Microsoft is handing over bags of cash to get this Windows 8 exclusivity -- both fits the facts and Microsoft's past behavior. So I'd say, yes.

The simplest explanation -- that Microsoft is handing over bags of cash to get this Windows 8 exclusivity -- both fits the facts and Microsoft's past behavior. So I'd say, yes.

Yup. It's nice to see Microsoft returning to their roots and playing to their strengths. This is the Microsoft we all remember, and the reason for the BorgBill icon on this site. Don't know what else to do? Buy exclusive hardware. Microsoft has no idea how to compete with Apple and Google on this new turf, so they're doing what they do best. Bags of cash. It was a winning strategy for two decades. How could it miss?

The simplest explanation -- that Microsoft is handing over bags of cash to get this Windows 8 exclusivity -- both fits the facts and Microsoft's past behavior. So I'd say, yes.

This is actually quite a clever strategy by Microsoft. Allow UEFI secure boot to boot other operating systems on x86 systems, then get the processor manufacturers to make it impossible to make a useful(*) port of any other operating systems to new x86 processors.

* Yes, as an x86 processor, other operating systems will run, but if the power management cannot be access by the OS, it isn't going to be a useful port.

What's with all these new CPUs being labeled for "Windows 8 only?" First it was the new Intel processor, now AMD. Does Microsoft have some new ridiculous "partnership" strategy going on that we need to be aware of?

The simplest explanation -- that Microsoft is handing over bags of cash to get this Windows 8 exclusivity -- both fits the facts and Microsoft's past behavior. So I'd say, yes.

But it really doesn't make sense, for especially Intel. They are deathly afraid of ARM making them irrelevant in the post-PC world*. Why would they be so short sighted when cash isn't a problem for them.

probably because the usual limiting factor with new chips isn't demand, rather manufacturing capacity. MS have probably locked up a large amount of the demand with advance orders, so promising anything to anyone else would just be bad form on their part.

Microsoft certainly isn't handing any money to AMD. AMD is not a Windows 8 tablet launch partner. They got cut out completely, which is why all of the major upcoming Windows 8 tablets are Atom (or Core) despite the fact that AMD's Brazos platform is considerably faster than Atom.

AMD and their ODM partners are free to work on Windows 8 tablets on their own time (and their own dime), but unlike Intel they aren't getting any help or promotion from Microsoft. Which is a shame since AMD really needs the business

What is a shame, and I'll get hate for saying so but fuck it, truth is truth, is how the Linux community royally fucked over AMD.

What did the community say? What were their words? "If you'll open up your specs we'll support you!" and foolishly AMD not only listened and opened up their specs but actually hired devs to help the open drivers team get their code up to speed quicker. Yet what do we see on every. damned. article. that has anything to do with graphics or Linux? A bazillion posts that say "Buy Nvid

If MS "sponsorship" of these chipsets is the case, it will probably come out. If it comes out, they will have to pay massive amounts of money to the EU and lose very lucrative contracts due to being a repeat offender. Would they really risk that? It would cost them billions this time, because previous fines obviously wouldn't have been high enough to deter them. Personally, I'm not so sure whether this is actually happening or not. They have the reputation, but it's a high risk strategy so it may very well

Consider this: x86 on Android is a second class citizen, ARM is better supported by the ecosystem. Intel's trying hard so as not to be left out of the party, but ultimately advancing Android is counter to x86's interests in the near term.

Consider more general Linux: next to no application affinity to a particular processor architecture in the desktop space. All the popular software *today* is pretty much straight from distro and trivial to recompile. The exception being flash, but even Adobe seems to be trying to kill it at this point. Again, x86 vendors are likely not to be excited about advancing that picture of the future. Of course, the other fact of relatively low desktop share attributed to linux.

Finally, Windows. While they are trying to do an ARM strategy this go around, 99% of the reason to run windows is to run applications that, coincidentally, are x86-only. If you make x86 processors for a living, you *want* Windows to win at this point as the alternatives erase your competitive advantage and in fact turn it into a disadvantage. There is also probably some fear that the 'safe' Windows market that has always been x86 constrained getting away from that if MS' ARM effort actually takes hold. The more AMD and Intel do in the near term to be 'kind of like ARM, but with real application support', the more unlikely Windows on ARM is to make an advance.

That may explain it. Another possibility that I tought since the Intel anouncement is that those chips may simply not be able to compete with ARM ones in a level playing field. Thus, the only possibility is to focus on a market where x86 is an advantaje, that is Win8.

Otherwise, I'd have to conclude that everybody got insane. Why would a manufacturer want to reduce the appeal of his chips? Low volumes mean highter prices, that lead to lower volumes, and highter prices (just like rocket fuel calculations)...

It makes all the sense in the world that Intel/AMD wouldn't put in the effort to go after Android. It's firmly entrenched as an ARMv7 platform, and using MIPS or x86 chips will mean all the CPU-intensive apps in the market won't work. Intel/AMD would have to come up with ARMv7 emulation, and at that point, why not just go with the latest, nice and cheap, ARM CPU?

Intel/AMD would need to maintain a huge advantage in performance, and price, and power requirements, for a good long time, before manufacturers w

What's with all these new CPUs being labeled for "Windows 8 only?" First it was the new Intel processor, now AMD. Does Microsoft have some new ridiculous "partnership" strategy going on that we need to be aware of?

I think it is most likely that they don't think they can compete with ARM for the Android market. x86 compatibility isn't a compelling feature for an android machine. To the extend that ISA matters, the ISA to be compatible with is ARM. This makes it really hard for Intel and AMD to win supplying chips for Android devices. Windows 8 is an easier market for them to penetrate in the short run. In the long run, both AMD and Intel benefit from steering mobile devices to a platform that at least encourages x

I suspect it's more a case of Intel and AMD wanting to break into the mobile space, but not wanting to take on ARM head to head. Win8 products give them that opportunity. Thry'll target Android when they have a product that's competitive with ARM, until then no manufacturer would have any reason to use their hardware for an Android product.

Seriously, how much does it cost to "support linux" from a CPU vendor POV? They have just been putting out chips like they always have and letting people do what they will with them, windows, linux, bsd, qnx, wind-river, whatever.

Now they're doing *OS detection* to make sure that the OS is Windows 8? Come on.

They are going to have to devote time and resources toward preparing and releasing documentation and then maintaining it. All this so a few oddballs with nothing better to do can shoehorn linux onto something and giving it less functionality then the native OS.

Citation please? Because I've not seen anything about "OS detection" in TFA, simply that they aren't gonna be doing support, IE drivers. Nothing stopping you from using the already open drivers and if AMD does as they've done for years the latest Linux drivers will probably have support for this one too.

The only place I've heard of any actual lock down is on WinRT, which is no different than what Apple does with iOS. Surprise surprise, Ballmer copying Apple again, but these aren't ARM they are X86 which me

1. it costs more to lock out a compatible OS than it profits to 'let it work' at the very least, or provide enabling source/documentation at the most.

2. Expecting what came before+sensible innovation for a given sum is not entitlement. It is a natural expectation from consumers. Expecting this and getting attempts at false scarcity in the form of windows 8 style lockdown (or gnome3 or half closed android or nvidia blobs) is something reasonable to complain about. Contrary to your attitude, complaints are

I mean, we all know it was those evil pro-MS Intel types who named their chips "Pentium XP" and launched them just a couple of weeks after M$ launched Windows XP!

Oh, and Jerry Sanders *never ever* testified in favor of M$ at that Anti-Trust trial, that was some Intel evil guy.

And AMD Never worked out a deal with M$ to have it push 64-bit windows onto AMD's 64-bit CPUs, that was Intel, because it was evil Intel that forced us to upgrade x86 to 64 bits intead of using some miracle architecture.

Yup, AMD has a long history of fighting tooth & nail for the forces of good to stop Microsoft at every possible turn! That's why I know this story can't possibly be true, especially if it is being put forth by those known-pro Wintel fanbois that work in AMD's PR department...

IA64 (Itanium) was actually backwards compatible with x86-32. It just wasn't very fast when it ran code in that mode on the initial version. Later versions of the Itanium were much better (mainly due to a major change of putting an x86 processor on die until the software executed version caught up).

The biggest issue was that at the price point they offered it at most people couldn't justify it for the workload they had and then AMD extended x86-32 to be 64-bits which pretty much ate the 64-bit market aliv

There's plenty wrong with Itanium from an engineering standpoint: the idea that instruction ordering should be done at compile time, instead of at execution time when there is more information available, is completely stupid. Remember, this is the company that got rid of the barrel shifter for the P4. Not every decision they make is good.

Intel already used the Hondo name - for an Itanium chip, the Itanium 2 MX2, in 2004. A rather interesting one at that - the only processor I know of to use an L4 cache. Now granted, it's a Multi-Chip Module - two processor dies and an L4 die - so the L4 cache was basically just there to make the hastily glued-together processors work together faster.

I know, it's not exactly going to cause confusion for anybody, but it still irritates me when this happens.

As a desktop Windows developer I was disappointed at how Microsoft has abandoned its desktop roots and users for a single-minded pursuit of the iOS/Android smartphone market.The alienation of their existing customer base has been made very clear to Microsoft. So has the widespread dissatisfaction with Metro 8, but no one at Microsoft is listening to us or even feigning concern.

If Microsoft and hangers on like AMD want to bash their heads into a brick wall that's their choice, but they're not taking us with them. We read the writing on the wall and have switched our desktop efforts to Android tablets. Thanks for the push, Microsoft.

You see once upon a time we had this thing in X86 called "the MHz War" and for Intel, MSFT, and to a smaller extent AMD it was a good time. It meant that both home users and businesses were chunking their systems every 3 years so they were getting LOTS of business, and they became spoiled to the crazy amount of units they were selling.

But then a funny thing happened. Both Intel and AMD hit a thermal wall close to 4GHz and realized that leaping each other in MHz wasn't gonna continue, so first AMD and then Intel started adding cores instead of raw speed. Now for the consumer this was truly wonderful, no more having a program stall and drag down the system, and you could run as much stuff as you wanted. But then AMD and Intel went from "good enough" to "insanely overpowered' and suddenly you were picking up triples and quads in $300 systems so the users simply didn't HAVE to buy new machines, why their 4 and 5 and even 6 year old machines ran everything they wanted with plenty of cycles left over!

And THAT is why MSFT and Intel and AMD are all trying to get a chunk of the tablet market, its because the average user can take any Phenom I Quad or Core quad and run the thing and be happy for a decade, possibly more. I know I have several customers on Phenom I triples that are still quite happy with their performance and see no reason to buy new systems, and with a little TLC than Turion or Core duo laptop will likewise do anything they want to do.

The ironic part is that Intel and AMD and MSFT are gonna be getting in to what I truly believe is the tail end of the boom. ARM is already talking about "dark silicon" because they are already making chips where you can't run all the transistors without killing the battery and with quad core ARM units already out there, where else is there to go? I predict the wave will last another 2 years, maybe 3, simply because there are many that haven't picked up a tablet yet that might want one. After that it'll be X86 all over again and nobody will toss until the previous one breaks...well except for Apple users, but being caught with last year's iPad is just as unhip as wearing last year's Air Jordans but those three companies i named will never be fashionable like Apple.

The simple fact is unless we come up with some new battery tech along with some way for programmers to use an assload of cores there really isn't anywhere to go, hell even gaming which traditionally spurred sales hasn't been slamming CPUs in awhile, and not because of the consoles either, but because its really fricking hard to split that stuff up into 4 or more threads. And for everything else? what does an average user do that would even stress a Phenom I triple? YouTube? FB? playing MP3s? we just don't have any "killer apps" that can really stress these monsters, even older monsters like Core Quads and Phenom Triples.

When the talking point is "Windows 8, not Android" my first question is "Windows RT or regular Windows?" In other words, is this an ARM chip (as is the case with 90% of Android systems) or an x86 chip? That key fact is buried near the end of the article (x86).

That little detail makes their decision not to support Android initially a lot easier to understand: people who sell Android tablets have all their expertise in ARM, and are not going to be in a hurry to buy an x86 chip.

Valid point, but for a forum dominated by people presumably knowledgeable in IT, any mention of AMD is presumed to be related to its 64/32-bit x86 chips, unless otherwise noted. While AMD just "might" be selling more non-x86 hardware, at the moment that's what they're famous for. Even their ATI-inherited GPU designs target mostly the x86 PC market. So there, no need to say Obama is the incumbent president and Romney his Republican challenger in a discussion about current US politics.

any mention of AMD is presumed to be related to its 64/32-bit x86 chips

Huh? We talking about tablets! Most tablets are based on ARM chips. Even Microsoft has been forced to acknowledge that ARM dominates the tablet space, by creating Windows RT. That's why the fact that a new tablet-centric CPU is not ARM is itself significant.

Yeah, people who are thoroughly familiar with AMD know that they don't do ARM. But most people don't know that. I didn't know that, not until I did some Googling just now.

They are not supporting Android, i.e they are not going to guarantee that its works but that does not mean you cannot run Android or your favorite Linux distro on the thing,Lots of FUD and outrage over nothing at this point in time.

Furthermore the article doesn't at all get into the realities of developing an Android tablet, which for AMD would be a significant hurdle that almost certainly shaped their plan to stick to Windows for now.

While Android itself is cross-platform, the ecosystem as a whole is built around ARM processors. As a result getting Android up and running is a fairly easy endeavour - though still easier for ARM since it more closely matches the Google reference platform - but getting the rest of the ecosystem in place

Linux is the primary component of android that cares about what chip is running. Most everything else in android just uses whatever linux gives it and couldn't care less what chip it's running on. If Android is not supported on a CPU, you can pretty much bet they mean the Linux part of Android.

It seems as if Intel and AMD are repeating Nokia's mistake in signing on to some exclusivity agreement with Microsoft. Likely to be the only winner in such a deal is the software company, since software has traditionally been the more profitable business.

What may well seal the future of Windows, however, aren't deals with big Western corporations, but Microsoft's ability to shift the low-end players into adopting the OS. The question is, will the generic gadget manufacturers of China willingly abandon the relative freedom they've enjoyed with installing an OS they can already fork and bastardize without seeking the blessings of some big American company?

Maybe it's time for Microsoft to opensource some bare-bones version of Windows, perhaps rewriting it to ensure that installing it on premium hardware is enough of a pain to merit licensing the full OS?

Hondo is a Brazo based "APU" so it's definitely x86. But unlike Intel Clover Trail, AMD Hondo isn't really a tablet chip because it fundamentally lacks "Connected Standby" capability in Windows 8. That means it won't do 30 days of standby in an on state nor is it compatible of meeting the 300 millisecond screen-on requirement. Moreover, Hondo is a 4.9W TDP part while Intel Clover Trail is a 1.7W TDP part.

We need a new name for this Microsoft only architecture - let me suggest "strongARM".How else can these "our product is deliberately crippled" announcements from Intel and AMD be explained? Nobody wants to annouce that their product is crippled unless they are coerced into it.

perhaps you might want to actually read the article. The chip isn't crippled, it is an X86 based chip, if you want to get one and run Linux on it you can, if you want to make the effort of porting all the android arm based stuff to it you can and AMD will probably thank you for it.

And while the big corps are doing that, there is an entire team of medium corps (ok, "medium" at chip manufacturing is still huge) competing to create the most open environment, and locking the fastest growing* market segment to themselves.

* And expected to start to eat the biggest market segment soon, because of Moore's law and the "good enough" status of the desktops and laptops. Also, they are already starting to reach the processing-intensive ninche, where power consuption is as important as on portable

As I understand it, theyre the only game in town if you want to do massive virtualization, because they provide substantially higher cores-per-socket than Intel (unless you count hyperthreading, and really who does that).